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The woman was asleep on the living-room couch in her West Side home when she awoke suddenly,
unable to breathe. She thought her body was shutting down until she realized that a man was on top
of her.

Darla Dalton, 40, was the first witness yesterday in the trial of Deneen L. Black, the man
accused of being the “Hilltop Creeper.”

She testified that the intruder was gone so quickly, slipping out the window beside the couch
and leaping off the front porch, that she couldn’t identify him. That will be a familiar theme in
the trial, attorneys for the prosecution and defense told jurors in their opening statements.

“There will be not one single witness that will take the stand and point at that man,” defense
attorney Gregory Peterson said, referring to Black.

Instead, the case will hinge on what Black told Columbus police after they arrested him as a
suspect in a string of break-ins on the West Side in which women reported awakening to find a man
watching them or touching them.

Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Jennifer Rausch told jurors that Black confessed and took
detectives on a driving tour of houses where burglaries occurred.

“Listen to what the defendant had to say about what he did, how he did it and all the places
where he did it,” Rausch said.

But Peterson said jurors will hear “severe challenges to what the confession actually says.” He
urged jurors to focus on how the interrogation was conducted and “consider the substance of (Black’s
) statement.”

Black, 34, was indicted on seven counts of burglary and one count each of kidnapping and gross
sexual imposition. He was suspected in as many as 19 burglaries that terrorized residents of the
Hilltop and Franklinton neighborhoods between December 2011 and August 2012.

The charges of kidnapping and gross sexual imposition accuse Black of restraining and fondling a
teenage girl during one of the break-ins.

Police started watching him after finding his fingerprint on the outside of a window at a
Sullivant Avenue house where one of the burglaries was reported. Black lived on S. Wheatland
Avenue, in the center of the Creeper’s prowling territory.

Peterson said no one can say when or how the fingerprint was placed on the house. “It is not
evidence of the commission of any crime whatsoever,” he said.

Dalton testified that she was awakened by the intruder about 6 a.m. on July 19, 2012, in her
Dakota Avenue home in Franklinton. He was draped across the back of the couch, with a hand pressing
on her midsection; and part of his body was still outside the window, she said. He fled as soon as
she woke up.

Asked if she knew or recognized the defendant, Dalton said no.

The trial is expected to continue into next week in the courtroom of Common Pleas Judge Stephen
L. McIntosh.